RMS says Creative Commons Unacceptable 647
Mr A Coward writes "Richard Stallman has stated in an interview that he no longer supports Creative Commons licenses. In the interview carried on LinuxP2P.com, and which is largely about the P2P and DRM issues, Stallman ends by saying: 'I no longer endorse Creative Commons. I cannot endorse Creative Commons as a whole, because some of its licenses are unacceptable.' He suggests instead using the GPL for creative works." The crux of his argument is that, since he disagrees with some of the CC licenses, and people tend to lump them all together, he feels compelled to reject them all. What's your take? Are some Creative Commons licenses worth using, even if others aren't?
What bunk! (Score:4, Insightful)
RMS: People have a right to share copies of published works; P2P programs are simply a means to do it more usefully, and that is a good thing.
If we are going to mince words maybe we should start with an honest appraisal of the difference between sharing (as in borrowing a book) and copying. All of us who make a living being creative understand the shortcomings of current copyright legislation and know that we need people to think about creative work in new ways if we are going to take IP law into the 21st century; we know tilting in favor of multi-national corporations at the expense of individuals is a mistake, but we are not going to get anywhere with the type of lazy thinking which asserts things like, "If copyright law forbids people from sharing, copyright law is wrong." I'll take Lawrence Lessig's [lessig.org] ideas over Mr. Stallman's any day.
are they different? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is RMS relevant? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's time we just start ignoring RMS. Once the national media noticed him about 5-6 years ago, his ego has tipped the scales. He's so far off the deep end that I for one don't want to be associated with his ideas.
It's like we're all saying "Open source is a good thing", and he's now picking up that banner, saying "Unless it's completely open and completely free in every possible sense of the word, it's wrong". That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying "Open source is a good thing".
My take? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, the man did some great things in bringing forth the Free Software movement, but now it seems like his goal is to destroy everything that doesn't fit his ideals, and that's just as dangerous as what he opposes.
He just won't support the brand. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds fine to me. I've never been a big supporter of Creative Commons for much the same reason. All Creative Commons seems to be, to me, is a collection of license that someone has paid a lawyer to draft up and then donated that work to the public. You can pick and choose between the licenses and their clauses. It's a generous donation and it's very handy.
Then again, I've never seen how Creative Commons amounts to the "social movement" that people make it out to be. Stallman, whether you agree with him or not, seems devoutly intent on shaking up the foundations of the modern concept of intellectual property. By comparison, Creative Commons licenses seem like little more than tools for helping people navigate the status quo.
Some are worth using (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely! The organization as a whole is trying to better society. I read many of Lawrence Lessig's articles and agree with just about everything he says. His goal is to provide options. A full range of options. Pick the ones that suit your needs and ignore the rest.
After all, isn't that what we do with our Linux systems? We pick the distro and packages we want and ignore the rest. If you don't like OpenOffice it doesn't mean you shouldn't use Linux! Just don't use the parts you don't like!
Re:Is RMS relevant? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's time we just start ignoring RMS.
Long past, if you ask me.
RMS has outlived his usefulness to the FOSS movement. He is, I might add, an obstacle, which can very easily make people move AWAY from FOSS.
RMS, we are all greateful for what you have done in the past, but please shut up.
My take is people can do what they want (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What bunk! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, please explain to me how you can have a sane system of laws that restrict things like sharing over P2p and don't restrict things like letting a friend read a book. In a digital world, I do not believe this is possible.
So, I would say that in the final analysis Lessig's ideas reduce to Stallman's. They are just more palatable to you because they seem to say something different, and you hold out some forlorn hope that there is a reasonable way to restrict digital copies.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What bunk! (Score:3, Insightful)
RMS has made a cottage industry out of passing his opinions off as fact. He believes that copyright laws are unethical, therefore it is a fact that copyright laws are unethical.
Now maybe in a reality-free zone where everybody works for the common good and nobody takes more than his* fair share, that would be a reasonable thing to pass off as a fact. But Stallman's "facts" are impractial in the real world.
The guy is an idealogue. More power to him for practicing what he preaches, but his "my way or the highway" philosophy really marginalizes any arguments that he presents.
-h-
* the "gender-neutral" "his"
Pope Stallman Rejects Another Herasy (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many times when "Screw you guys, I'm going home" is a valid response, but Stallman has done it so many times, about so many Open Source projects that don't adhere to Pope Stallman's ex cathedra Encyclical on The True and Only GPL that it's lost all meaning. Yeah, RMS, we've figured out nothing that you haven't personally blessed is pure and holy enough for you. Next question.
Perhaps his most impressive feat is making Eric Raymond look reasonable by comparison...
Crow T. Trollbot
Re:What bunk! (Score:4, Insightful)
'sharing over P2P' doesn't make sense. When it is over, you have a copy, and I have a copy. You are not 'sharing' your copy, you are creating and giving me a copy.
This isn't rocket science, people!
GPL is not right for everything (Score:5, Insightful)
I love the Creative Commons. I think the Creative Commons is great as a whole, because some of its licenses are not unacceptable. In fact, I want Larry Lessig to have my baby. Wait that's not feasible.
(Changes in bold
What's right for software is not right for matters of opinion or fact. The distinction between sources and binaries don't matter here and actually confuse the right decisions. Nor is there any reason to believe that someone would get anything out of the ability to revise and extend anyone else's words. Okay, it might make sense for a collaborative manual, but I think there are many cases where the right leads to the trouble we're seeing with the clever editors of the Wikipedia.
Creative licensing should be a broad church (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What an extremist (Score:3, Insightful)
"that is more libertarian than left-liberal."
Anyone who uses the term "left-liberal" makes themself look like an idiot. Linus is no Libertarian (Big-L - as in the neoliberals/anarcho-capitalists who pretend to be libertarians) and RMS is no "left-liberal" as you attempt to stereotype it.
Linus is a smart man and Stallman has gone off the deep end. Keep your political name calling out of it.
Creative Commons Problems (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree completely with RMS. The Creative Commons licenses are not something that should be lumped together.
They also have several legal problems. Because there are 10 different possibilities for CC license combinations, it's difficult to determine whether all 10 are enforcable or not. The process for vetting even one license is hard enough, much less 10 distinct licenses.
The other is the "no commercial use" licenses. I think these would work fine for a work where the ownership is tightly controlled, but for a collaborative work where no one can authorize license changes, it raises an enforcability question.
If you were to sue someone for infringement, you'd generally sue them for the monetary damages caused by their misuse of your work. If it's impossible for anyone to commercially exploit the work, there's no way there could be any damages. You therefore really have nothing to sue for, and no way to enforce.
For tightly held works, you can claim that you have the ability to license the work under another license if you desire, and therefore there is a commercial potential, and a potential for monetary damages. For works with tainted ownership (say 100 contributers, some dead, many with no contact information), it would be hard to argue that anyone anywhere could ever commercially exploit the project, and there's no basis for claiming damages.
Re:Is RMS relevant? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stallman slipping? (Score:3, Insightful)
Community: "Please Mr Stallman, stop being yourself."
In other words, step down from what? He does what he does because he is on a mission. People on a mission follow the mission, not the "community".
Re:are they different? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that this issue isn't really Creative Commons' fault and could be best handled by enforcing clarity. Stallman, who loves to enforce similar "clarity" about existing words which he has personally redefined to mean only what he says they do, certainly ought to get that. I imagine his hostility is really because their range of licenses includes things that are too restrictive for his taste.
Re:My take? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stallman slipping? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you wanted someone in a stuffed shirt that business people could relate to, you should have invited Bruce Perens instead.
Re:GPL is not right for everything (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course you can write that. What is your problem?
Re:Stallman slipping? (Score:3, Insightful)
The power of the GPL is completely predicated on the power of copyright. Without copyright, there can be no GPL. RMS's goal isn't to achieve "the freedom for anyone to distribute any published work," but rather to achieve a world in which published works are themselves free -- free to be built upon and creatively refigured, and free to contribute to the common good. To quote Eben Moglen [wikipedia.org], the goal is to create "a commons, to which anyone may add but from which no one may subtract." [columbia.edu] Hell yes, it's ideological. To me, that's a good thing.
Re:Stallman slipping? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bizarre Read. Nothing unexpected, really. (Score:3, Insightful)
What gets me is that RMS notes that people, in general, lump all of the CC licenses as one entity. He notes that they need to be addressed seperately.
Having said that, RMS is lucid in his responses. I think what gets peoples' goats about RMS is that he is basically unwavering and uncompromising when it comes to his ideals. This has and always will be the case.
My only wish from the article would have been RMS clarifying what portions of the CC Licensing system he considers to be acceptable and what parts he doesn't. Wholesale dismissal of the CC licenses is like getting a paper back with a big fat "F/0" and a note at the bottom saying "Do better next time", without any indication on the paper of what was wrong. (Bad experience with some college professors.
Why gets me is why people keep feeling surprised or shocked when RMS restates his ideals and views: free as in freedom, complete freedom, no restrictions. Yes, it's a hard left. Yes, it's idealistic. Yes, it would cripple companies and businesses that depend on the restriction of information-based goods(music, movies,etc).
But he does have a point. 100 years from now, how will we access DRM'd content that should have gone public domain? How will we read ebooks that can't be readliy converted to other formats? Same with encrypted and locked music, movies, etc?
Personally, he sounds alot like a cross between a hippie, priest, and lawyer, no offense meant to the hippie, priest, or lawyer. But just because he sounds like that, doesn't mean he isn't onto something. It's just not very palatable.
Re:What bunk! (Score:2, Insightful)
The man has a point (Score:4, Insightful)
But is he - in this instance - being irrational? Well, the creative commons typically used by Flickr, is simply a means of easily defining the rights you are providing. It can mean a number of things, and I think he has a point - that its confusing; you have to read the rights for every bit of work, rather than being able to trust that a creative commons mark means you have certain rights.
I still wouldn't use the GPL for writing or music because the GPL has clauses specifically aimed at software. There is no "source code" for music, and no obligation to distribute the score of the music along with the audio recordings for example. However, the creative commons is a diluted concept if you don't gauranttee certain rights to people, and they have to dig to see what their rights actually are.
Stallmans problem isn't one of intellect as such, but rather poor communication. He communicates in a uncomprimising and arrogant way; his way or the highway; and is unwilling to be part of a bigger team that he has no direct control over. That is why Open Source came about - we escaped the limits of Stallmans retoric.
Stallman still doesn't get Open Source I think - The Hurd being an example more of Cathedral style than Bazzar style development. Open Source has overtaken him for a reason, and that reason is a positive feedback cycle generated by a community of willing participants.
The big difference between open source and free software is the uncomprimising ideological dogma of Stallman. Free Software was about the Stallmans dictatorship; his word was law in that universe. Open Source on the other hand starts with the principles of Free Software, but does not insist the developers have the same ideological passions as Stallman.
That said, Open Source has not diluted the principle (as the Creative Commoms may have) by retaining a clear statement about what is and is not Open Source.
Re:What bunk! (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, huh. So, you have to copy a program from disk into memory in order for it to run. Is that illegal? How about if you have a huge cluster?
Also, tell me how you restrict making a copy without breaking into people's computers or putting police chips in everything? Which is worse, a world in which people can freely copy stuff, or a world in which every single move you make with anything digital is carefully monitored so you can't? There isn't much of an in-between here you know. I you don't have the careful monitoring, people will make copies. They already do, and all the enforcement efforts of RIAA have not made even the tiniest dent in filesharing.
Personally, I don't want the police state.
Giving incentive to the creators of stuff via copyright is growing more and more pointless every day. So, be brave and give up the stupid idea. It won't work. It can't work. Think of something better.
you, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Human beings have produced great art, science, and engineering for millennia in the absence of copyright protection. The assertion that copyrights and patents have any social or economic merit at all is at best unproven.
So, the ideologues trying to push unproven ideas on the rest of us are people like you, people who make strained arguments that somehow society needs to bear the costs and complexities of IP law.
Go prove your case before you whine about Stallman.
Re:What bunk! (Score:5, Insightful)
In both cases the thing being "shared" is information. The difference is that in the case of the book, the information is coupled with a physical object and thus causes the confusion in the form of some people's physical-world-coupled simian brains being unable to realize what it is they are sharing. Any "practical" measures to restrict sharing of information (which is what this is all about) will and must lead to totalitarian measures in regards to digital communication equipment i.e. computers and internet. It is not only "practical" but the only way.
Changed my own attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
a) It makes me look like a fool, and
b) There is now absolutely no need for me to do it anyway. With the amount of crazed diatribes he's been releasing lately, he's doing a far better job himself of convincing everyone of what a generally undesirable human being he is than I ever could. His fame for his prior contributions has served as the rope, and over the past 2-3 years he's done an absolutely smashing job of using it to hang himself. He's now on the fast track to complete irrelevance.
How true the mathematical proverb is. Every problem does, indeed, have its own solution.
Re:What bunk! (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. One of my major reasons for disliking RMS is that he has a very black-and-white "you're all with us or you're all against us" philosophy. Since he has problems with a few of the Creative Commons compatible licenses, they must all be rejected in his mindset. It's just so him. Of course, he naturally suggests that the GPL be used instead because it's his solution and thus it's correct for everything.
This is the same sort of uncompromising attitude that fuels religious conflicts everywhere. "If you're not just like me, then you're evil." RMS is a dogmatist. It doesn't matter if you think he's right in his stance, his arrogant, dismissive attitude is inexcusable.
Re:What bunk! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure you can, if you write from memory a new book, with whatever mangled data you have. That is why copyright applies to "derrived work".
That is the real issue.
The real issue is that due to being under the spell of their incessent propaganda, you have done what all of these swindlers of "intellectual property" always try to induce: to try to deny the properties of information and talk about "selling" it, as a part of a system for rewarding artists. Information cannot be sold, it lacks the fundamental characteristics for it to be so. Also, the two are completely different and separate. There are many possible methods to reward artists, which do not involve the concept of "copyright" or "intelectual property". Patronage is one of them.
Re:He just won't support the brand. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Reread the article. If you use a Creative Commons license that might meet his standards, he still won't endorse it because the Creative Common "brand" allows licenses that he doesn't like. Instead, he thinks you should use his particular license (the GPL) for everything.
I'd respect him more (or have less disrespect for him) if he'd criticise the particular licenses he didn't like and give some praise for the ones he did like, but instead he says effectively, "Forget it. It's not worth the trouble. Use my license instead." Instead he takes the ideological "with us or against us" stance.
Re:What bunk! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is RMS relevant? (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a good look at the second word in that sentence. I. Why should you have the right to redistribute a work that someone else made? Here's an answer for you. You don't have, and shouldn't have unless the author explicitly gives you that right. You disagree. Fine I have every right to take your car out tonight. I mean who do you think you are locking your car up. Just because you worked hard to paint it, pay for it, or whatever, sure as hell deosn't give you the right to lock me out of it.
See this is the problem. OSS kicks ass. It kicks ass because we GIVE each other the right to use, modify, and redistribute the code. There is no God given right that allows you to lay claim to the works of others...nor should there be. If they give you that right cool, but remember they are not evil because they choose not to.
Re:you, too (Score:5, Insightful)
And you can see the result! People trading copies of the Sistine Chapel all over the streets of Milan! Bootleg recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos leaked far and wide before Bach's official release date!
(The reason we didn't need COPYRIGHT LAW for so long was that it was so damn hard to COPY THINGS. Duh.)
Re:What bunk! (Score:3, Insightful)
They have no legitimate wishes. The only reason copyright exists is because of a clause in the constitution that grants congress the power to create it expressly for the purpose of encouraging more stuff to be created. So, it's not there for the benefit of the creators at all, it's for the benefit of everybody else.
There is no 'natural' ownership right over your writing or music or software. The only right you naturally have is the right not to give it to anybody else.
Re:GPLv3 probably won't be used in BusyBox. (Score:3, Insightful)
-h-
Re:Is RMS relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Conversely, there is no god given right to protect your works either. Copyright is an entirely legal (and fairly recent) construct.
That's because RMS "gets it", Lessig doesn't (Score:5, Insightful)
During the 1850's there were all these groups that wanted to work out a friendly solution so that the slave states could get along with the free states. Rules to be nicer to slaves, shorter slave terms, more clearly defined boundaries, and so on and so on. Well they didn't get it, it was an all or nothing game. The very nature of the beast was coercive and restrictive in a way that could not survive the industrial revolution.
Well today, there are people who want a "compromise" with the copyright system. A shorter term here, a nicer enforcement there, more controll to the original author here, and so on and so on. What these people don't understand that the very nature of beast centers arround coercing how people can use and manipulate information at their disposal - the anti thesis of the information age. The only kind of copyright that can survive the information age, is one that can not be enforced.
Instead of crying about that, or clinging to old ways, what people need to do is learn how to make money from content services and not from content controll.
Is that actually true? (Score:4, Insightful)
I posit that such a nightmare scenario is entirely illusionary, especially for franchises that are worth protecting.
Re:Stallman slipping? (Score:3, Insightful)
We should be finding ways to allow people MORE freedom (while still compensating software creators, artists and the like). Stallman's taken a draconian approach that actually means that there are less places you can use the software that most people have written. He's like the anti-terror legislator that talks about freedom while whittling away all of our freedoms supposedly for the common good. He's destroying the very freedom he claims to cherish.
Ideally once a piece of software is written it should be usuable by anyone who wishes to use it. Anything that gets in the way of that. DRM, software licenses etc. is bad. It means you either have to get the permission of an author who might not wish to give it, (or will only give it if financially compensated to an amount that makes your whole project no longer economically feasible), or if other Intellectual Property laws allow you can write your own from scratch IF you have the expertise. What all of this leads to is duplication of effort, inefficiency and people not having access to software that's out there.
What we need to do is find a way to compensate artists, software authors and inventors WITHOUT limiting distribution (in the case of software, both binary and source distribution should not be limited). I don't believe the author/artist should have control of their work once it's released, but they should have a right to the FRUITS of their labour - ie. if there's money being made, they should get some of it. This is quite a huge challenge technically, and a fundamental principle that no one in the mainstream is even attempting to address. However, if we could do it, we'd live in a world where source code is available for you to examine and modify, new cures and treatments aren't held to ransom by the inventing company, music distribution cartels can't come after you etc. etc. I think it's possible though, so why isn't there anyone persuing it? Simple there's more money to be made this way by the greedy, and those who can manipulate the system.
Too bad too.
Re:What bunk! (Score:1, Insightful)
However, I think the poster was talking a world where copyrights did not exist. Therefore, so what if one of the big boys use your PD stuff. Their stuff will be PD too and you can use theirs in return.
If the poster was talking a world with copyright still existing, then my vote, were I to give the $1 support would be for a "copyleft" license and not the public domain.
all the best,
drew
(zotz posting as AC)
Re:What bunk! (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't give someone a safe with a bar of gold in it, and the combination to the safe, and then let them take that safe home and expect them not to be able to take the bar of gold out. They have all the information necessary to do it, and eventually somebody will.
When you start going down that road, where you end up is in an 'arms race' between the people who make DRM, and the people who unlock content and redistribute it. There's no end, and eventually everyone just ends up with computers, the cases of which are totally filled with epoxy, and wired with self-destruct mechanisms.
DRM isn't a winnable fight, but the battle could really be obnoxious in the mean time.
Re:What bunk! (Score:1, Insightful)
Er... aren't you passing off your opinions as fact, too?
My high school history teacher gave us hell if we ever said "I think" in an essay. Obviously it's what I think -- that's why I wrote it. Don't water down your writing with that crap.
Now maybe in a reality-free zone where everybody works for the common good and nobody takes more than his* fair share, that would be a reasonable thing to pass off as a fact.
What meaning does "fair share" have in a world where we can make exact duplicates for free? If my public library had a replicator, and could make enough copies of "Oh the Places You'll Go" for everybody who wanted to borrow one, would we accuse them of taking "more than their fair share"?
Usually "more than his fair share" means taking many of something, when there's a limited supply. In this case, nobody takes many of something (how many copies of something do you need on your hard disk?), and the supply isn't finite.
But Stallman's "facts" are impractial in the real world.
Many facts we take for granted were criticized as "impractical in the real world" at one time.
Re:What bunk! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, there are other incentives. everything from rich sponsors to plan economy. Over time, we've found that the free market with working competition is the best solution for almost every form of good. There's competition in IP because there's money in IP (and yes, I mean IP as a whole).
It isn't perfect because Metallica is the one and only Metallica, even though you have many bands that sound sort of like Metallica. But you have the same in physical goods, an iPod is the one and only iPod, even though there's many music players that sort of work like iPod.
You're telling me there's so many other great incentive systems, well present them. Product placement? Content is ad, ad is content? Government subsidies to artists? The band who plays at the local club? People don't spend that kind of money on nobodies, particularly in your case where they'd have a world of music to take freely from.
Copyrights and patent are not the common standard? Whatever you're smoking must be good, it might not be the only incentive but they are in effect everywhere. Find me a country that doesn't have copyright laws if you can, enforcement can be more dicy...
CC as social movement (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that you've heard of CC at all shows that it's having some effect as a movement.
What the CC movement is ultimately about is showing people that there's more to protecting your work than simply slapping a big © symbol on it. What if you demand attribution, but don't care about duplication? Copyright is not a binary thing. CC firstly educates that there are different options for different uses. It shows that if people start using CC, there's much more usable content out there for people to share and build on. And by creating and sharing the licences and making them easy to apply, it removes the largest stumbling block in the way of people who want to share their stuff while still exerting some control.
Creating the licences is pointless if nobody uses them. You have to get out there and show people how and why. CC's rapidly accelerating acceptance is evidence that they're doing a decent job of it.
Re:That's because RMS "gets it", Lessig doesn't (Score:4, Insightful)
(For those who don't know, Brown was a abolitionist terrorist who tried to start a slave uprising in the south just prior to the Civil War. He and most of his followers were executed for their actions during the raid on the armory at Harper's Ferry. Lincoln, of course, was the 16th US President, and is now so well respected his image is engraved upon Mt Rushmore and the five dollar bill, and he has his own memorial in Washington, DC.)
Re:GPLv3 probably won't be used in BusyBox. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) The objection was reasonable
2) He tried to comment
3) He couldn't make his way past their filters.
I hope he is moderated up to 5 insightful/informative, so the drafters of the GPL3 may see it.
I don't know of ANY good way of constructing filters so that you can get all the messages you need to get without drowning in spam and other garbage. It's a real problem. But the reported attempt doesn't sound like a phenomenally acceptable filter.
RMS's Ego Trumps His Ethics... Again (Score:1, Insightful)
I feel the same way. I don't agree with every last nutball opinion that comes out of RMS's mouth, so I now feel compelled to reject all of his views.
Not really. But what a loon.
Stallman has clearly expressed in the past that non-software works like art and the written word don't "require" the same type of "freedom" that software does. While publishing a software title the traditional way is downright unethical (he says), publishing a book the traditional way is just fine (also ethical: documentation manuals with GFDL 'invariant sections' that demand that all copies include unmodified political screeds). So if I choose to use a -more- lenient license than traditional publishing, like ANY (even the most limited) CC licenses, giving MORE rights to the reader - that should also be perfectly ethical. But somehow, it ain't.
Why? Because ego trumps ethics when you're RMS. Here's a guy who has defined his whole existence through a poorly thought-out armchair moral philosophy about software that wouldn't withstand five minutes scrutiny in a 101 class. But it drives him crazy (well, crazier) that the open content and free culture folks don't bow their heads toward his licenses like the software people do. So his ethical stand morphs, somehow now keeping traditional publishing ethical but making the unquestionably freer and more open CC licenses unethical. It's an amazing contortion job. I'd call it self-deception if I thought the guy were self-aware enough to realize what he was doing.
Honestly, I think RMS is a genius. Copyleft - brilliant idea. I've had my hands in Free Software for nearly two decades and I still believe that, no matter what you call them, liberal licenses and open development systems are incredibly powerful, liberating tools. Many of his concepts are important and right-on, in the broad strokes if not always in every little detail.
But he's also something of a kook, and he's certainly no moral compass for the masses. Can we stop pretending that every half-baked utterance that squeaks out of this guy's beard-hole is important? Some of it is great stuff, but a lot of his blather is just chest-beating or pointlessly insisting that every shade of gray has to be very definitively labeled as either black or white. I hate to play this card, but sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade: this probably has something to do with his autism. I have a relative with a spectrum disorder and the symptoms are eerily similar.
Eccentrics are great, they contribute lots of great things to society, I love 'em - but eventually you gotta come to the conclusions that at least half of what they say is nuts. There's no reason for every goofball comment the guy makes should be a tech headline. Can't we get over this already?
Re:What bunk! (Score:2, Insightful)
The cost of repoducing information has been dropping by leaps and bounds since 1440. The only difference between then and now is that it has finally reached the virtual zero mark. Everytime information repoduction makes a significant jump downward creators get nervous and try to stymy these new innovation. After years of fighting they eventually give up and focus their efforts on how they can use this system to their benifit. And each time they find themselves making even more money than before. Video tapes were going to be the end of the movie theather according the big movie executives. They fought tooth and nail to stop it. In the end they benifited from it immensely. It created an entirly new revenue stream that the big movie executive could have never imagined previously. An entire industry sprung up around it, a (as of 2000) 7.3 Biiiiiiillion dollar industry. *removes his pinky from the corner of his mouth*
bah!
P2P File Sharing = Printing Press
You can't stop this tidal wave, but you can surf it all the way to the bank...
Re:What bunk! (Score:1, Insightful)
And it's attitudes like yours that are the reason why media companies are trying to shove DRM down our throats. "They can't stop me from illegally copying digital works, so I will do it."
Bullshit. DRM is about control... it's not about piracy, since there has never been (and will never be) a DRM scheme that stops piracy. These companies are not stupid, they know this. The whining about copyright infringement is a cover for more and more control over distribution and, increasingly, the technological infrastructure.
DRM will encourage piracy because it's the only way to get non-crippled stuff... but they don't care about that because they will have extended their fingers of control into every electronic device.
I'd answer that, but my chains are too tight... (Score:3, Insightful)
and I can't type very well right now. I'll do my best, anyway. The Disney chain boss has left for five minutes, so I may have time to bang out a quick response.
Instead of crying about that, or clinging to old ways, what people need to do is learn how to make money from content services and not from content controll.
Nice idea. Let me know when your company goes public. In the mean time, ponder the notion that it takes a long time for human systems to change, and that usually an awful lot of experimentation is required before the solution that history regards as "obvious" manifests itself. While giving everything away seems obvious to you, if you ran a three-person company, or a three-hundred person company, or a three-thousand person company, would you bet the company and the livelihood of your employees on your deeply held conviction?
The Creative Commons approach is anything but clinging to old ways. It's a means of providing more collaboration, more free exchange of culture, and more options. It provides freedom of choice, a way out of the old one-size-fits-all model of traditional copyright. Like the GPL, it does so within the existing copyright regime.
Sure, it's not as black and white an approach as the GPL. It makes it tougher to determine who should be flying X-Wings and who belongs in a TIE Fighter, but it works in the real world. It is showing people that they can control the level of copyright protection of their works. I won't be at all surprised when more and more content businesses see the light and start voluntarily restricting their control over content. In the mean time, all content creators are not malevolent, drool-fanged monsters trying to steal our precious bodily fluids. Sure, the RIAA are scaly reptiles, but most content creators of them are just honest people trying to make a buck, and in my opinion, bashing them over the head with wildly inflated historical analogies doesn't do anything to advance the dialogue.
Slavery? Come on.
Re:What bunk! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is RMS relevant? (Score:1, Insightful)
Copyright law is relatively recent because historically the creation of a work was its own protection.
Try copying the mona lisa using only paints. Now try it with a color copier.
Are you willing to say the mona lisa has no value because copyright law is a new construct? Shit, civil rights law is relatively new in the US... doesn't mean it doesn't have merit.